How Britain’s Right Can Recover

Better answers on economy, immigration would help

[The Editors is called The Editors, plural, not The Editor, singular, for a reason. When I launched it, a shrewd friend advised, “it can’t just be you.” I’m delighted to start introducing some additional voices. Today’s comes from Michael Mosbacher, who is associate comment editor at London's Daily Telegraph. He is a past editor of Standpoint and The Critic, having co-founded both British magazines.—Ira Stoll.]

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves 10 Downing Street, July 5, 2024. Handout picture by Kirsty O'Connor / No 10 Downing Street.

Britain’s Conservatives are choosing a new leader. The party has had to get used to this; whoever takes over at the start of November will be the sixth in eight years, the fourth in two. But, after their defeat in the July 2024 general election — down to 121 members of Parliament from 365 five years previously, the worst drubbing in the party's history — it is the first leadership election since 2005 while the party is in opposition.  

Regardless of which of the candidates wins (the party’s MPs have started off the process of whittling down the original six to two, who will be put to the membership in October; the final members’ vote is currently looking most likely to pit the former centrist, immigration hardliner Robert Jenrick against the anti-woke, Nigerian-heritage Kemi Badenock), the Conservatives need to have clear answers to three questions. If they don’t, their chances of recovery are slim.

The Tories must regain their reputation for economic competence. Over the last 14 years in office, the party has repeatedly spoken the rhetoric of low taxes and promised a bonfire of red tape – while simultaneously raising the tax burden to its highest level in over 70 years and introducing yet more regulation. It has been the worst of all worlds — discrediting pro-market policies while failing to actually implement them.

The party has waxed lyrical about the entrepreneurial spirit, but it has done little to nurture it. Today the UK’s highest earning 1 percent are paying 29 percent of all income tax. The Conservatives had genuine problems to deal with — Covid-19 and soaring energy costs — but the hugely costly furlough scheme and energy bills subsidy were of their own making and caused public spending to surge. 

The level of government debt is now so great that when Liz Truss, the only Tory prime minister of the last 14 years who was a real believer in markets (although she was responsible for the prodigious and ill-thought-out energy market intervention) did try to cut taxes on wealth creators, the bond markets rebelled amid fears of a pension fund collapse. The policy was swiftly reversed, followed not long after by Truss’s exit from Downing Street after just 50 days in office.  

So the next Tory leader will need to regain a reputation for economic competence for the party. This might become easier if Labour makes a stupendous mess of things — which with their tax plans is looking increasingly likely.

The next leader must show a plan to tackle mass immigration that could actually work.